My Shoeless Child
by celrock
Summary: Find out why Tommy never wore shoes. Story is told from Didi's POV, at around the time Tommy is 4-years-old and in his second year of preschool. I hope you enjoy!


Author's Note: I made a comment on a retweet on Twitter that sparked up a brief conversation with regards to this on Twitter this morning that led me to write this short little one-shot. Anybody ever wonder why Tommy was always going around with no shoes on? Well, here's the answer, told from a mother's perspective no doubt, and doing an entire story from Didi's POV, I'd like to thank Nairobi-harper for the inspiration, as she just recently released a story from Didi's POV, I hope you enjoy!

My Shoeless Child

Summary: Find out why Tommy never wore shoes. Story is told from Didi's POV, at around the time Tommy is 4-years-old and in his second year of preschool. I hope you enjoy!

Disclaimer: I do not own the original Rugrats characters, they're the property of their original creaters. I own any OC's you don't recognize, like Zack and his aunty Celeste, while Peter is owned by TCKing12.

Start of Story

Didi POV

Every mother goes through struggles with their children. For some, it's getting them to eat their vegetables. For others, it's getting their child to fall asleep at night, and I went through this constantly with my second son, Dil, on a day-to-day basis during his days as an infant, but with my oldest, it was the article of clothing known as shoes. Ever since Tommy was a tiny baby, he refused to wear shoes. If I tried to put shoes on his feat, the normally quiet, well manner child, when it came to getting him dressed and a fresh diaper, would put up a fight. He'd kick and scream, nearly knocking my glasses off of my face every single time, to the point that it became nearly impossible for me to get shoes on his feet. If we were not doing anything out of the ordinary, I more or less, gave up trying by the time he was about 10-months-old, and let him run around barefooted most of the time.

On occasion, I went through the trouble to put him into shoes. A few occasions from his infantilehood would be for my half brother's wedding, an important business dinner for Stu that we had to take Tommy to at the last minute when his babysitter canceled, on account of a dead goldfish, and I'll never understand how Stu and Pop managed, but when they entered Tommy into that Little Miss Lovely contest to my dismay, and took him to a baseball game, at which I saw my son on TV after getting home from work, they managed to put shoes on him for both of those events. How I slept through Tommy's screams on the morning they snuck out of the house to that beauty contest, I'll never understand, but shoes were never a favorite thing of Tommy's, and other than those rare times, I only struggled to get shoes on his feet on one particular summer's day when the weather man said it was going to be a hundred-and-five degrees out. Pop wanted to take the kids to the park, though I tried to talk him out of it because of how hot it was going to be that day, but knowing how stubborn my father-in-law could be, I knew getting him to change his mind would be twice as painful as putting shoes on my son's feet. But not wanting Tommy to get terrible sunburns that day, I struggled to put shoes on his feet, and tried to tell him that he could only go to the park that day if he wore shoes. He calmed down and let me put the shoes on his feet, though it took us nearly half an hour just to get them on, and that was the last time I recall trying for a good while after that.

So you may be wondering, did I ever worry about my son getting hurt? Of course I did. Any mother worries about their child, but I kept the house and yard relatively clean, and we were lucky to live in a rather safe neighborhood, where the park and playground were kept relatively clean. Then of course there were the many places I took Tommy, museums, shopping malls, doctors offices, and so on. Despite the amount of trouble he'd sneak off and get into, not once did he get hurt, but most of these buildings, are kept clean too. And to my pleasant surprise, he didn't get hurt when he and Dil got lost in the woods, or when we were in Paris at EuroReptarLand, or on that island where we met the Thornberrys. The only time his feet ever got hurt was about two years ago now, when he went with Chuckie for a day to this trial preschool run, around the same time we got some new neighbors, the Generics, and got a splinter in his foot on the playground equipment. That particular day, I did send him out of the house with shoes and socks on his feet, only to learn later from Taffy that he had taken them off on the playground, and they ended up at the emergency room, because on top of the splinter, he got stung by a wasp. Of course, two-year-olds are creatures of habit. By the following day, that incident was obviously a bler in my son's mind, because his preference to be barefooted continued, and with him going through his terrible two's at that point, I wasn't about to put up a fight anymore, unless I absolutely had to.

Well then came the day for him to start preschool. Boy was that first morning torture, getting shoes on his feet. I told him he had to wear shoes to school, and at least at this point, he could talk, so while I don't like to use the bribing method, in fact, Lipschitz strongly discourages it, it was either bribe him with Reptar bars, or be late to school every morning because of his refusal to put on his shoes. This worked for a while, but by the end of the day when Stu, Peter, Taffy, or Zack's aunt would pick him up, I'd get a report that by then, his shoes and socks were no longer on his feet, and they'd spend a good ten to thirty minutes, looking for them before leaving the school. What would it take for me to get Tommy to keep his shoes on? Our prayers weren't answered until just a few days ago, after starting his second year of preschool.

It was one of the few days when I was coming to pick him up. I arrived at the school to find Tommy in tears. I asked him what was wrong, and my four-year-old son told me that he was sent to the time out chair by Miss Weamer, because he took off his shoes in her classroom, which was not allowed. When we got home and I gave him a snack, we sat down at the kitchen table and I told Tommy that I've been trying to get him to wear shoes because not only is it socially more appropriate at his age, but it's also unsafe to go around without shoes. Of course, he then asked me if it's so unsafe, then why did he get away with it for so long? I simply sighed and told him, because there are some things, a mother simply cannot, put up with. We've mostly been in environments where your going around barefooted hasn't been an issue, but now that you are in your second year of preschool, going around like that is no longer socially acceptable, and looks like your teacher isn't going to let you get away with it. I took Tommy early the following day, and had a talk with his teacher about the issue. She told me that shedding clothing in her class was unacceptable, and anybody who did it, would get punished. I told her that this was a good rule to have at this age, and perhaps enforcing this would get Tommy to keep his shoes on, because I've never had much luck with this. Well, finally, at age 4 and 3-months-old, after having to go to time out for something so silly, Tommy decided to reluctantly keep his shoes and socks on at school, and I told him, that if he was good at school, I wouldn't enforce this rule at home, but after a while, he got so use to wearing shoes, that his habit of going around barefooted became a thing of the past, making me a very proud mother. Sometimes, you have to let the child decide on their own that it's time to break such a habit, and when he or she is ready, they will.

End of Didi POV

The End

Author's Note: Well, I hope you all enjoyed that little one-shot story. I'd love to release more, but I have Kit, my cleaning lady coming in a little while to do just that, so looks like new stories will have to wait, but I hope to return very soon with more great stories, for now, you all take care, and, we'll talk soon!


End file.
